Pen and Ink Reflections - Pen and Ink Reflections

Filipino Moses

9/24/2023

flooding in Metro Manila

Some years ago, I took a varied ecumenical group of young people to the Taizé Community’s International Gathering in the Philippines. For the first week, our group visited communities further north on Luzon island, including indigenous people displaced from their land. We were then billeted with local families in a poor neighbourhood of Quezon City in Metro Manila. I remember vividly how, after a typically wonderfully warm Filipino welcome, the first thing our hosts did was to point out the water marks high up on the walls of local streets: ‘that was from the last flood a month ago, they said, ‘sadly we are used to that kind of thing’. The impact of such experiences is powerfully transmitted in our contemporary reading today. It is echoed in so many places across the world, not least among the poor. It asks: ‘where is the God of Moses when you need them today?’...

adjusting the lens to tell a bigger story

9/10/2023

image by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

In his tender and tantalising work Anam Cara, John O’Donohue wrote that:
“the way you look at things is the most powerful force in shaping your life.”

I want to talk about three ways of looking at things suggested by our readings today – the microscopic that allows us to appreciate our own smallness and uniqueness; the telescopic that invites us to move imaginatively towards universes beyond this one; and the cosmic that calls us to a bigger story. For story is critical and it is only through story that we shall be able to effect the extraordinary changes required by our current ecological crisis...

Earth's Desire

9/3/2023

‘Let justice flow like a river’ is the central theme of this year’s global ecumenical Season of Creation. This phrase comes from the book of Amos, chapter 5, part of which we heard just now. Let us hear how this speaks powerfully today and why people of faith are called to work and pray together….
(Watch the Laudato Sí Movement’s ‘Prepare for Season of Creation 2023’ video here...)

interpreting parables in different ways

7/16/2023

Sower at Sunset, by Vincent Van Gogh

One of the particular spiritual sayings I often return to is from the Irish poet-priest John O’Donohue: ‘When you see God as an artist, everything changes.’ We are so used to hearing about God as a law-giver, an instructor, and/or a judge, that we can so easily miss this central truth of living faith. Of course, law and specific guidelines and moral codes can help us in our lives. Yet we have often so over-emphasised the will, and judgement, of God almost to the exclusion of the imagination and creativity of God. That is one reason to look at Van Gogh’s great painting of the Sower at Sunset alongside the parable of the Sower and the Seed in today’s Gospel. For we are helped by viewing the parable as art. Indeed, we might see Jesus’ life and teaching as so much more a great artwork than a set of rules, never mind a clear blueprint for living. Like a great artwork, the parables particularly invite us into fresh perspectives, and encourage us to become artists of our own lives, sharing in God’s imagination and creativity…

the Good bad book and the easy yoke

7/9/2023

image: The Meeting of Rebekah and Isaac, Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University

The Bible is known to many as ‘The Good Book’, but is it actually a good book, morally speaking? In the USA this has become a political, as well as a theological, question. A Utah school district recently banned the Bible from its elementary and middle schools for what it named as ‘vulgarity and violence’.[1] This followed a parent’s complaint that the Bible has material unsuitable for children, after Utah’s Republican government had passed a law in 2022 banning ‘pornographic or indecent’ books from schools. This is not an isolated case. For recent conservative bans on books have been particularly aimed at education around LGBTIQA+ issues. Yet this can easily rebound, as it draws attention to the Bible’s moral ambiguities. Religious conservatives often assume the Scriptures to be unadulterated good news for all. Meanwhile some secularists tend to assume bad news. However, read as a whole, the Bible’s reality is that it rarely offers simple black and white morality. Rather it invites us to wrestle with its challenges, and inspirations. From this we can indeed grow in the faith, and power, of God to which the Scriptures witness. We do so however by deepening our sense of God working with and through our very human realities, not escaping from them. This is certainly true of Rebekah and Isaac, who are centre-stage in our Genesis story (in chapter 24) today…

simple words that can be hard

7/2/2023

Sorry, as Elton John sang, does often seem to be the hardest word, doesn’t it? We know that personally. We know that as a nation and as a world. Other words can be hard too. Yes is one. Of course, No can also be hard. That is why there are so many moral injunctions. Whether we look at things personally, or corporately - say in terms of climate change - we human beings so often fail to say no to those things which do us and others harm.

Yes can certainly be hard though. Saying yes to God’s life and grace can be tough, even when we know it sets us and others free. We are too often afraid: afraid to take the risk; afraid of the unknown; afraid of making a mistake; afraid of the consequences even when we know saying yes will be good for us and others. That is human nature, and human nature, and human will, alone, tends ultimately to fail us. Yet, by God’s grace, these simple but so hard words are possible…

steps and shapes beyond shadows and separations

6/25/2023

image: Hagar and Ishmael by John Stayn

As I have lived most of my church life primarily in Anglican and ecumenical settings, I have to admit to some bemusement about the annual marking of the Uniting Church’s founding. I guess it is partly the equivalent of the patronal festivals in other mainstream Churches. However these typically centre on a particular saint, or an aspect of faith (such as the Holy Trinity), after which a particular congregation is named, not a particular Christian denomination. Denominationalism is, after all, a modern idea, and would be a horror to our Uniting Church Reformation forebears. Jean Calvin, for example, sought to reform the one universal Church of God, not to create an alternative. The great Methodist pioneer John Wesley also formed a vital and innovative new movement but never sought to leave the Church of England. That is pertinent in marking this anniversary. For it directs us back to the Uniting Church’s crucial ecumenical and ‘open future’ charisms. These are clear in The Basis of Union, the key Uniting Church founding document. As a body, we are only one very small part of the universal Church through time and space. Therefore, rather than being yet one more denomination, we are called to help pioneer new paths of faith and relationships. Our calling is always to be a Uniting Church, holding our structures lightly and open to new ways of being followers of Jesus with others. So how what might today’s story about Hagar say to us in that? For it is certainly a powerful challenge...

laughter amid thorns and gold

6/18/2023

Maybe what she wanted to do was punch Him (God)
But she couldn’t

So Sarah laughed

Didn't Suzanne Terry put it well in her poem 'Sarah Laughed'? How many of us have wanted to punch God, or worse, for what has happened, or not happened, to ourselves and others? In Genesis chapter 18, Sarah laughs out of her deep experiences of sorrow, anger, and utter frustration, with God. After all she has experienced, as a childless migrant woman, in an ancient patriarchal culture where child-bearing was so important, how dare God turn up and now declare fresh hope. Why take so long to give this gift? Why put Sarah through such trials? We can easily identify. As elsewhere in the Bible, we are not presented with a simple moral or spiritual inspiration. Rather we encounter a very human struggle, with which we are invited to wrestle. Suzanne Terry’s poem is a product of this. For she was responding to a book entitled Those Who Wait: Finding God in Disappointment, Doubt and Delay. This, like other writings by Tanya Marlow, seeks to explore how we live with the realities of suffering…

on bleeding and reaching out for love

6/11/2023

image: Monty Lov on Unsplash

Last year SBS Insight told some of the diverse personal stories of faith, loss of faith, and changing faith, in contemporary Australia. One was of a young Croatian Australian woman who has committed her life to God through a faithful adherence to Islam, including covering her head and body in conservative traditional dress. In this she has found a profound sense of peace and flourishing. Some significant resistance has however come her way. She experiences some of the continuing Islamophobia within our society, and, in addition, strong extra kickback from some white Australians, not least fellow Croatians. For what, some would say, is a nice, white, western, and well educated, young woman doing taking up such a religious path? Is this not also, some would say, a betrayal of her family, and culture, too? After all, religiously speaking Croatians are almost exclusively Christian, and in particular Catholic. What on earth is this young woman doing? What is happening here? We might say something similar of the stories in our lectionary this morning, each of which involves a breaking with powerful expectations, and a profound response to needs of salvation which are simply not met by conventional culture or practice. Abraham, Sarah, Matthew, the synagogue official, and, not least, the hemorrhaging woman: each challenge us. They invite us to reflect upon what is bleeding in our own lives, hearts and souls, and invite us to reach our in faith ourselves. For what are our needs that require transformation? What salvation do we seek? What of God is calling to us?...

what's in the Name?

6/4/2023

The clergy of the Uniting Church of Australia are obliged to agree that they will baptise new members in ‘the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’. It is one of really only a handful of non-negotiables. So, why? What does this mean? And what matters about this particular attempt at describing God?...